“Do you want to meet anybody?” he asked.
“No. Not really.”
He smiled. “I thought so. I know how you feel. Has it been one of those days?”
Isabel took another sip of champagne. “Yes,” she said. “But this helps.”
“The Review? Problems with that?”
Isabel shook her head. “I’m looking after Cat’s delicatessen, and I was worked off my feet. Then I had lunch with somebody who revealed something which made me think. Nothing personal, but something which, well, which shocked me. So I just feel a bit…”
Simon put a finger to his lips. “You don’t need to tell me,” he said. “I understand. Why don’t you just slip through to your seat. We won’t be offended. Catriona will come through in a moment and sit next to you.”
Isabel did as he suggested and left the reception to find her way to her seat in the grand circle. The house was filling up, and there was that low hum of conversation that precedes the curtain: people waved to one another here and there, programmes were studied in the half-light, jackets were taken off and draped around the backs of seats.
Isabel read the biographies in her programme. There was a Russian tenor, appearing in Scotland for the first time; there was a young singer fresh out of the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow; Don Pasquale himself had sung the role at Covent Garden and was shortly going off to Sydney. She turned to the summary; it was always helpful to refresh one’s memory as to the argument of an opera. Don Pasquale plans for Ernesto to marry a candidate of his choice, but Ernesto is really in love with Norina… Her attention wandered, and she looked about her. The man in the seat in front of her was whispering to his wife, pointing, discreetly enough, to a couple at the other end of the row. Isabel wondered what that was about. The wife shook her head. Disapproval? Or misidentification?
Her gaze wandered. Over to her right, she saw her friends Willy and Vanessa Prosser; they had not seen her, but she would go and have a word with them in the interval. And behind them…she stopped. A few seats away from her, but two rows behind, was Nick Smart—and he was looking directly at her.
She could hardly pretend not to see him, as she was half turned in her seat and looking directly at him. So she lifted a hand and gave him a halfhearted wave. He smiled, and rose to his feet. He was making his way over to speak to her.
He crouched down in the aisle, beside her seat. “How nice to see you,” he said.
“Yes. Likewise.” She sounded forced; she could tell. And so could he, she imagined.
“You enjoy Donizetti?”
“Of course. Yes. I’ve seen this production in Glasgow.”
He had seen it at the Met.
“Ah.”
“Yes. And on the evening I saw it,” he continued, “the singer in the title role had an allergic attack—during the final interval. Somebody popped his head round the curtain and said, ‘Give us four minutes, ladies and gentlemen.’ That’s all they needed to get the understudy into his costume and push him on. Four minutes. And he sang beautifully. Brought the house down at the end.”
“My goodness.”
“Yes.” He had rolled his programme up and was tapping it gently on the back of the seat in front of Isabel. She noticed that he was wearing a velvet jacket and that the cuffs of his shirt were secured with fancy cuff links: a flash of gold. “Tell me, how’s Jamie?”
“He’s playing tonight.”
“Yes, I know. I’m seeing him later.”
She felt a sudden lightness in her stomach; a strange sensation, almost like that which one experiences when driving a car over a hump. And then an emptiness.
“Yes,” he said. “Later.” He looked at his watch. “Well, I guess I’d better get back to my seat. It’ll be starting in a moment.”
She heard herself mutter something, but she did not look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the curtains of the stage, but she was not taking them in. Catriona Mackintosh and her fellow guests had joined her now, and Isabel greeted Catriona, but in a distracted way.
“Are you all right?” whispered Catriona. “Simon said you were feeling a bit low.”
Far more now, thought Isabel. “No, I’m all right. A bit tired.”
“I won’t notice if you drop off,” said Catriona.
There was little chance of that, thought Isabel. Where was he seeing him? And why had Jamie not mentioned it to her? She went over in her mind exactly what he had said about this evening. She had assumed that he was coming back to the house—he usually did on a Wednesday; in fact, he spent few evenings at his flat these days. Sometimes he went there when he taught late at the Academy, or when there was a concert on that side of town. But that was rare.
From where she was sitting she could, by leaning forward, see into the orchestra pit. She had not done so before now, because she had been reading the programme. Now she did, and she saw him sitting almost under the ledge of the stage. He looked up, but he would not see her; looking up into the theatre from down there one would see just black, just a sea of darkness behind the lights shining down upon the stage. He moved the neck of the bassoon, swivelling it round, and slipped the reed into his mouth to soften it. She saw all this. You are mine, she thought. You are mine.
AFTER THE PERFORMANCE she lingered in the glass-fronted hall at the entrance to the theatre. There was a large throng of people; off to the side, the bar did roaring business. People were talking, laughing at shared jokes, struggling into coats. Taxis lined up in the street outside; the occasional chauffeur-driven car, its engine purring, its driver casting his eye anxiously over the crowd; a bus to take a group of people back to Stirling; a school outing congregating just outside the door, shepherded by a pair of teachers who had that look that teachers always have on such occasions—that counting look.
Isabel suddenly felt very lonely. There was nobody else, she thought, standing by herself; everybody was with somebody. She looked at her watch, more to give herself something to do than to find out the time. Jamie had said nothing about meeting her afterwards, and yet they usually did. He would suddenly materialise, carrying his bassoon case, and they would leave the concert hall together; except last time at the Queen’s Hall, when he had gone for a drink with Nick Smart, and this time, she assumed, when he was planning to do the same.
She made up her mind. She would not wait for him; she would go home and relieve Grace of her babysitting duties. She had been carrying her coat over her arm, and now she slipped into it and began to button it up.
“There you are.” It was Jamie. He looked flushed, as if he had run round from the stage door at the side of the theatre.
She was not sure what to say. She was relieved to see him, but what about Nick?
He put his bassoon case down on the ground and reached forward to kiss Isabel on the cheek. “I hope you liked it. I thought that it was the best performance of it they’ve done. That Russian has a fantastic voice.”
She agreed. He did.
“Look,” said Jamie, glancing at his watch. “I have to see somebody about something. Do you mind? I’ll go back to my flat afterwards, as I’m teaching down there tomorrow morning.”
She had that feeling again. It was somewhere in her chest. “See somebody?”
He reached down to pick up his bassoon case. So that he does not have to look me in the eye, she thought. “Yes,” he said. “Nothing important. Music stuff.”
“Of course.” She tried to keep her voice even. How well do I really know him? she thought. Not well. “I’d better go. Grace is looking after our son.” She stressed the last words, which was petty, and not what she had intended to do. He noticed, though.
“Isabel…”
“No. It’s all right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She moved towards the door. She hoped that he would run after her, would stop her leaving, but he did not, or not immediately. She had walked only as far as Nicholson Square, though, when he caught up with her.